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Part 5: Dances of Anatolia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East

18 Dances of Israel

1. The Origins of the Modern State of Israel

The Levant (the land on the southeast side of the Mediterranean Sea) was the original homeland of the Jewish people from at least the time of the ancient Egyptians. Through thousands of years, Jewish people spread throughout the Old World, settling in Spain, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and Iran. In Europe, they were known for merchant trades and banking because, as non-Christians, they were allowed to participate in certain business practices, such as money lending, which were forbidden to the Christian populations. After the Middle Ages, many nations conducted pogroms and genocide against their Jewish citizens. The Spanish Inquisition, Czarist and Stalinist Russian pogroms, and the gas chambers of the Nazi holocaust were all attempts at eliminating them. Antisemitism – the racist hatred of Jews – was a very common bias in the west. While less so now than before, people on the extreme right still target Jewish people as objects of hate.

The idea of a modern Israeli state arose to provide a safe haven for Jewish people facing genocidal atrocities in modern times. It started early in the 20th Century as Jewish communes (kibbutzim) in Palestine. The modern state of Israel was founded in 1948 on the land that had been a colony of Britain (British Palestine). Very much against the objections of the Arab populations of the region, the country was recognized by the west and the United Nations as an independent political entity. At the core of its founding philosophy, Israel welcomed Jewish people from around the world to come and settle there, making Israel a fairly multi-ethnic state, unified under an umbrella of religion. Under the 1950 “Law of Return” anyone who can prove at least one Jewish grandparent is entitled to move to Israel and get Israeli citizenship.[1]

The country’s existence is controversial to many people in the region. Consequently, Israel continues to have violent interactions with the indigenous Palestinian Arabs and the Arab people of nearby countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt as well as more distant regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Iran. Israel has had conflicts and wars with all of its neighbors, and it maintains a controversial policy of expansion and occupation into the Golan Heights, the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. In 2023, these tensions exploded into another brutal war with the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza. This war has brought terrible suffering to both innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

2. Geography and History

Israel is bounded on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, in the south by Egypt, in the east by Jordan and in the north by Syria and Lebanon (See figure 1 below). It includes three occupied/annexed territories. In the far southwest there is a narrow strip of land known as Gaza, populated by about 2 million people of Palestinian Arab ethnicity. Although officially governed by the Palestinian authority, Hamas, a terrorist/militant group, has ruled Gaza since 2007. To the east of Jerusalem lies the occupied West Bank, which was captured from the Jordanians during the 6 day war in 1967. The West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority. Pockets in the west bank have been “settled” by the Israel government with new communities of Jewish settlers, often displacing the Palestine residents of the region. The practice of settlement is a core policy of the current Israeli government but is one of the primary sources of the conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian residents of the region. The final occupied region, the Golan Heights, lies in the far northeast of the country on the east bank of the Jordan River. The Golan was seized from Syria during the 1967 war. In 1981 it was annexed by the state of Israel and is now governed directly by Jerusalem. The capital of Israel is Jerusalem. For a brief period of time right after the country was founded, Israel’s other large city, Tel Aviv was the capital, and many countries continue to identify Tel Aviv as the capital of the country since the ownership of Jerusalem is contested.

The region that we now call Israel was in historical times known as Canaan, Palestine or more generally as the Holy Land. The three major Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) all identify the region as their place of origin and all three religions identify parts of the region as sacred. The region has found itself under the dominion of many empires and cultures. In ancient times, it was ruled by the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Macedonians, and the Romans. In the 7th century the Levant was conquered by the Arabs, who brought Islam to the region. During the Middle Ages, the region was tossed back and forth between Islamic rulers and the Christian crusaders. After the crusades were over, the region was ruled first by the Malmuk Sultanate and then by the Ottoman empire, which ruled the area right up until the first world war. After the war, the area was ruled by the British who fostered widespread immigration of Jewish refugees into the region and cemented the idea for a Jewish state in the region.

As mentioned above, since the founding of the country in 1948, the region has been a flash point for war and conflict, including the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the 1956 Suez Crisis with Egypt, the 1967 Six Day War, the 1969 War of Attrition, the wars in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, the first Intifada from 1987 to 1993. After a brief period of negotiated peace, the Oslo Accords which gave a small measure of self-governance to the occupied Palestinian regions of the West Bank and Gaza and subsequent peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, the second Intifada was a war between Palestinians and the Israeli government. In 2006 the first Gaza war broke out, which was followed by another in 2014 and the current 2023 conflict. After over 75 years of war, invasions, protests, and terrorist attacks, the establishment of a peaceful co-existence with its neighbors and Palestinian residents seems very distant.

One interesting and more uplifting fact about the constructed identity of Israel is the revival of Hebrew as a language. Never before has an ancient dead language been completely revitalized as the first language of a group of people. The other languages of the Jewish people, such as Ladino and Yiddish, have not been so fortunate and continue to be highly endangered.

 

Figure 18.1. Map of Israel and Palestine
Figure 18.1. Map of Israel and Palestine

3. A Heterogeneous Mixing Pot of Cultures and the Creation of a Dance Idiom

Since it is a relatively new country, Israel does not have an old tradition of music or dance. Instead, it draws upon the traditions of the people of the many different cultures it has within its borders.

Klezmer dances and music accompanied the influx of Ashkenazi Jews and Chassidim who fled Europe after the Second World War. This tradition also brought along dances from Poland and Romania. One of the most iconic dances of Israel, the Hora, possibly the best candidate for identification as the Israeli national dance, shares a name with the Hora from Romania.

The Mizrahi Jews, who came from North Africa and the Middle East, form another important community in Israel. The Mizrahi brought with them elements of the musical and dance traditions of Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and Syria.

The Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, moved to Greece and Ottoman Turkey. When they came to Israel they brought with them not only Spanish traditions, but also Greek and Turkish dance styles.

Being located right in the heart of historical Palestine, Israeli dance shows the influence of their Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and Jordanian neighbors. In particular there is a style of Israeli dancing based on the Arabic dabke dance called the debka. Debka dances are done in tight short lines with a characteristic hand hold, in which you hold the left hand of your neighbor in the small of their back with your right hand.

Finally, another influential group were the Yemenites, who were Jews who lived in the southern Arabian Peninsula, and whose dances have a clear Arab flare. A characteristic step done in Israeli dancing is even called a yemenite step.

Each of these communities brought with them musical and dance traditions that, when synthesized together, comprise Israeli music and dance. One important consequence of this cultural admixture is that there are no “village” Israeli dances. Israeli dances are all choreographed by modern choreographers, often with the goal of creating a unified ethnic identity. When the country was first founded, most dances were choreographed to patriotic songs extoling the virtues of the Israeli state or to songs based on verses of the Old Testament, and to songs that praised the virtues of the agricultural life or beautiful gardens. More recent Israeli dances are often choreographed to popular music with more secular (and sometimes very irreverent) themes.

Although their couple dances sometimes have music in ¾ or waltz time, most often Israeli circles dances use 2/4 and 4/4 meter. Many Israeli dance choreographies feature rapid and large dance movements and turning and arm motions, finger clicking or clapping. Some contemplative dances include fluid, graceful movements, and repeated step patterns such as the grapevine (a.k.a. mayim step), cherkessiya, and yemenite.

Because of their roots in Eastern European Horas, most Israeli dances are done in circles, dancers in the 1960s and 1970s tended to hold hands in the circle, but this has fallen out of fashion and if you go to dance with an Israeli dance group today, they will dance in circles, but they won’t hold hands. There is also a smaller tradition of Israeli couple dances, which builds on the dances of Western Europe but with their own “Middle Eastern” flare.

A new and emerging style of Israeli dances converges with the 4-wall line dances of the US, where individual dancers all perform the dance starting by facing one wall. These dances have much in common with the American country and western line dances except they are done to Israeli popular music.

4. Music

Music for Israeli dance today is really mostly pop music which has been flavored by influences from Arabic popular music and the music of the many component communities of Israeli society. While some regional variation is found (e.g., the music of the singer Ofra Haza has clear Yemenite tonalities, and is sometimes even sung in Arabic), Israeli dance music is much more like an ethnic pop and features electric guitars, synthesizers, and drum sets. These are supplemented with clarinets, accordions, frame drums and dumbek drums.

Most Israeli dances today are done to music to singing. As mentioned above, many of the earliest dance songs were of bible verses and other religious texts such as the Song of Songs. Yet others were patriotic songs singing the virtues of the collaborative life in the Kibbutz and of taming the desert environment. More recent songs address the themes found in other popular music styles such as family, love, loss, prosperity, and obstacles to happiness. Interestingly, despite the current political tensions in the region, very few dance songs center on the topics of war or conflict.

5. Costumes

Like their music, Israeli folk dance costuming is a modern creation and reflects the fact that the Israeli dance tradition really took off in the 1950s and 60s. Israeli men often wear bell-bottom pants (commonly white), and women wear knee length “peasant skirts” or dresses. Often these costumes are in blue and white to reflect the colors of the Israeli Flag. You still find this kind of costuming in stage performances, but it is rare to find it outside of that context. There is a tradition of dancing barefoot, but in recent years tennis shoes, t-shirts and jeans, and athletic clothing have become most common.

 

Figure 18.2: Israeli Dance Costumes
Figure 18.2: Israeli Dance Costumes

6. Summary

Israeli dancing is perhaps one of the most interesting cases of the emergence of a folk tradition in modern times. Much like the revival of the Hebrew language, it developed as a means of creating a unified Israeli identity out of a diverse community of refugees and immigrants and blended all those traditions together to create something unique.

Further Reading

  • Bachar and Bachar (n.d.); Bachar, Gamliel and Isaacs (1975). Berk (1972). Berk (1978) Chochem (1948); Chochem and Roth (1941). Corona (1989), Donaghy (1969). Lapson (1954). Lexova (2000), Nagi (2011). See the references for complete citations.

Some Suggested Dances for Teaching

Discussion Questions

Discussion Question 1

Modern Israeli dances have origins in a variety of dance and music styles. But now it is considered a single type of dance. What does this tell us about the definition of what a folk dance is?

Discussion Question 2

Many Israeli dance choreographers now live in North America and Australia. Israeli dancing is also done all over the world. In what sense then, is Israeli dancing “Israeli”?

Discussion Question 3

When melding together all the unique dance traditions of its immigrant communities, Israeli dancing emerged as something new and different. Was this adoption and integration of older dance traditions an example of cultural appropriation? Why or why not?

Media Attributions

  • Figure 18.1. Map of Israel and Palestine © John W. W. Powell. Additional geospatial data cited in map. Used here with permission.
  • Figure 18.2: Israeli Dance Costumes © Asma, used with permission
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return ↵

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European and Middle Eastern Folk Dance Copyright © by Andrew Carnie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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